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The Music Video and Art

Labor45 - Electronic Toys

We're loving German experimental artists Labor45, who collaborate here with Spenza to create this u:ber video to Take Me To Your Leader. As nostalgically 80s and so German as it is, flashing influences of the visual aesthetic of Kraftwerk and sounding like something you couldn't quite put in a box. Following is their video and a little about them but first here are some thoughts their video has raised:

With new media art moving in a wider, yet more confluent direction and with viewing platforms diversifying all the time, the rise of MTV in the late 80s and capitalists like Lady Gaga who claim to create "art" in their music and videos has done little to influence the genre. Instead the area in which video art and the music video have blurred is one which was touched by enduring acts such as Kraftwerk and in the art world, and by the work of Nam June Paik of Fluxus in the art world who was part of a movement challenging conventions of art and music in public space. Didn't John Cage say that one way to write music was to study Duchamp? While the music video generally tends to allude to or add to the narrative, it can also transpose a music video from the realm of 'music' to 'art', and vice versa while contributing to a growing pool of work that celebrates and aesthetic driven by current trends in technology (going right back to Channel 4's The Chart Show, 1986 where videos were linked by their then state of the art computer graphics).

As the conventions of viewing video art change, moving out of the gallery online to anywhere one can fix a screen (recent 'public art' projects for London regeneration saw our own video streamed on loop in a run down estate in North London), the language of video art also changes. Yet is has never quite broken away from convention or explored the possible enough. Only new developments in technology and the occasionally brilliant directive (see Michel Gondry's video for Bjork's Declare Independence - which we post on here some years ago, who also plan to screen their new 40 minute 3D film in museums rather than any other kind of venue) push the medium of music video into the realm of art. Still, it is a blurred line that is as yet unexplored in any conclusive manner.

Labor45 are Barbara Herold, Katrin Petroschkat, both living in Munich . Their work is often about music, the reception and production of as well as where new date formats and digital advancements are heading:"LABOR 45 is about artistic research on today's technical features and aims to find new possibilities for usage and expression from within the medium."

Spenza on the other hand are interested in sound, with limited but early work in visuals seemingly led by algorhythmic pulsing and basic visual programme coding, going back to 2010: